Global Warming Solved for $250MM
January 13, 2010
What happens when you take entrepreneurs and give them a global problem like ‘global warming’ to solve? They build a business. Tens of thousands of them have started companies focused on making money around global warming, but a few have actually tried to solve the problem. Microsoft’s ex-CTO, Nathan Myhrvold is one the few who has developed a very simple solution to global warming at a cost of $250MM. Literally, he has a fix for global warming, but what is the real cost?
Nathan’s idea as described by Mark Whittington is to, “run a hose up to the stratosphere with balloons and using that hose to pump out enough sulfur particles to dim the sun’s heat just enough to counteract the effects of global warming.” Al Gore can rest easy, Nathan can solve the global warming problem, but I am getting a little worried. If the climate is so easy to manipulate what is going to stop nation states from manipulating the weather for their own purposes?
For example, Putin suggested that ‘global cooling’ effects need to be addressed promptly. Russia has significant resources and could unilaterally decide to increase global temperatures by a few degrees. What would we do about it? Would we pay Nathan to reduce global temperatures to offset those increases? What if Hugo Chavez decided to reduce global temperatures even more? Would we increase them? Maybe we would create a global market for temperature. Each country could buy a temperature - the ultimate temperature would dictated by market forces. I guess this wouldn’t be fair to poor countries and we would need some of offset to protect them from industrialized countries in cooler climates who sought to warm their shores.
I don’t have an answer, but I thought I would try to spark a conversation…
